Michaelius, America's 1st Dutch Reformed Pastor

Dan Graves, MSL

Church History Timeline

Perhaps it was a mid-life crisis that caused Jonas Michaelius to offer
his services overseas. For twenty years, after graduating from the
University of Leyden, the forty-year-old pastor had preached in quiet
Dutch villages and reared his family. Now, whatever the reason, he
volunteered to serve in the Dutch colonies.

During the early part of the seventeenth century, there was a real
shortage of pastors in the Netherlands and the situation was even worse
overseas. The colonists had to be content with "comforters of the sick."
These were men authorized to read scriptures and sermons, hold prayers
and (with special permission) to officiate marriages and baptisms.

Jonas' first overseas assignment was to Brazil which the Netherlands
had just wrested from Portuguese control. Before he could take up his
new duties, Portugal seized Brazil back. Jonas was diverted to Guinea,
Africa for two years before returning to the Netherlands.

On this day, January 24, 1628, Jonas sailed
for the New Netherlands (which is now the state of New York). His wife
and two of his children sailed with him. The ten-week voyage was a
miserable affair. The captain was drunk much of the time and the sailors
wild. Storms battered the ship. Food was poor and quarters were cramped.
No doubt the five were glad to land in New Amsterdam (now Manhattan).

Jonas was the first Dutch Reform "Domine" in the American colony. He
immediately organized a church in New Amsterdam and began holding
services above a grist mill for the approximately 270 European
inhabitants. He wrote, "At the first administration of the Lord's Supper
which was observed, not without great joy and comfort to many, we had
fully fifty communicants, Walloons and Dutch, a number of whom made
their first confession of faith before us..." (Walloons were
French-speaking Protestants.) The Church he founded became the famous
"Collegiate Church."

Mrs. Michaelius died just seven weeks after the family landed. This
was a severe blow to Jonas, but he tried to bear it in a Christian
spirit, "The Lord has done it. I must bear it. And what reasons have I
to object? For all things work together for good to them who love
him...I pray the Lord that neither through this nor through any other
trial I shall lose the courage I need so much in this ministry."

In spite of having to raise his family by himself, facing continual
friction with the director of the colony, dealing with scarcity of food
and dismal living conditions, Jonas stuck to his post a year longer than
he had agreed to do. He returned to the Netherlands around January,
1632.

What he did after that or when or where he died is not known. In
1637, the Dutch Church recommended that he be sent back to New
Netherlands, but the colony's leaders, remembering his earlier sharp
report on them, did not want him back. That is the last known mention of
his name in the old records.

Bibliography:

"Church of St. Esprit." http://www.stespritnyc.net/history.html

De Jong, Gerald F. The Dutch Reformed Church in the American
Colonies. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

Jameson, J. F., editor. Narratives of New Netherland, 1609 -
1664.Original Narratives of Early American History. Barnes and
Noble, 1959, 1909.